The younger girl put a slice of tomato in her mouth and seemed semi-surprised that she was still there.
With the basics of a deal with Xenophilius hammered into place, Lester had to move quickly to haul their chestnuts off the fire as the worst person imaginable slipped casually into the room. Well, second-worst perhaps, but only second to Dumbledore, and it'd be tough to judge since he had actually been wanting to catch up to her today.
Regardless, Rita Skeeter wasn't someone you invited to a children's party unless you wanted a drunken underage orgy of monstrous proportions plastered all over the next Daily Prophet with your name in bold. The look on Minerva's face said that she wasn't expected, leaving him scrambling to figure out how this was going to work. Fortunately he didn't have to, because she had spotted him.
"Well, if it isn't Mister Likefried," the odious woman said with a smirk, making him wonder if she was really that stupid or did it on purpose. "I just came from an interview with our mutual friend, Gilderoy. Did you have anything you wanted to say about what happened yesterday?" she asked with a predatory gleam in her eye.
"Only that I loved your article," he said carefully. The foul woman had a reputation for being very temperamental if you crossed her. "I take it there's going to be a follow-up article?" Lester asked blithely.
"Oh yes," Rita said, her eyes buzzing about the room. "You dispatching such a famous adventurer so handily left many people confused. It's raised all sorts of concerns, of course, not the least of which is his competency for the Defense Against the Dark Arts job," she said with a heavy hint.
"Of course he's incompetent," Lester said, catching on to what the woman wanted. "You have to have sense to be competent, and that man doesn't have the sense Merlin gave a goat."
Rita looked at him like she'd just found a sack of someone else's galleons and quickly went to pull out a quill and parchment.
"You hunt me down just for that?" he asked, playing with the lead she gave him to see where it led. "It's a waste of your time, if you ask me."
"Oh, no," she said distractedly. "I was trying to find out something else when I heard about this."
Rita paused for a moment to put an acid-green quill to her mouth and perch it on the parchment she had spelled to float nearby. Her face changed quickly then as she remembered something.
"You work for Gringotts," she said with a semi-seductive smile. "And are an acquaintance of Harry Potter's."
"I do," he said, plucking the quill from the parchment and handing it back to her. "And I am. But you're not going to get anything about either of those from me," Lester said with a smile before he lowered his voice. "I know better than to say anything on the record about something big enough to cause Gringotts to close its doors to outsiders. It's more than my head is worth."
The look on Rita's face told him… Lester wasn't sure actually. Either she understood he wanted to see her alone so they could trade information or she was promising him carnal relations in order to procure what she wanted. More than thirty years a widower had left him so rusty he practically squeaked when he walked and he never really thought that way anymore unless it was to poke fun at someone else. This might be more difficult than he thought.
"I think we could be of use to each other," Lester said, trying to spell everything out more clearly. On second thought though that didn't help matters at all.
"I think there's something you can help me with," he continued. That didn't work either.
"Let's go somewhere we can trade information," Lichfield said bluntly.
....
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